Last month, Privacy Lives joined nine leading privacy and consumer organizations in calling for changes to the Boucher-Stearns bill, urging much stronger provisions to protect consumer privacy both online and off.

On Thursday, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection will hold a hearing on consumer privacy. “The hearing will examine H.R. ___, the BEST PRACTICES Act, introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush, and a discussion draft, released by Reps. Boucher and Stearns, to require notice to and consent of an individual prior to the collection and disclosure of certain personal information relating to that individual.” Also, congressional staff has released a briefing memo (pdf) on the Rush bill.

Potentially promising, but I am concerned with this bit of news that the new bill doesn’t allow affected individuals to review their commercial dossiers (which, as we are quickly learning, are increasingly being used to make decisions about our lives by both commercial AND government entities):